


Call Me the Iron Lady

by DeceitfulHonesty



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Iron Man AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 06:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13828650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeceitfulHonesty/pseuds/DeceitfulHonesty
Summary: Tony Stark had only been gone for months, but it felt like years. After a particularly aggressive fight with some random villain, he suddenly announced his retirement and disappeared. All of his suits self-destructed and he left a few piles of half-finished schematics and partial constructs in the hands of Jemma’s boss at S.H.I.E.L.D. Apparently and Tony and Coulson went way back. Coulson was the only one Tony trusted with his creations and was tasked with finding a replacement for Iron Man.Which meant it was Jemma’s problem.





	Call Me the Iron Lady

Tony Stark had only been gone for months, but it felt like years. After a particularly aggressive fight with some random villain, he suddenly announced his retirement and disappeared. All of his suits self-destructed and he left a few piles of half-finished schematics and partial constructs in the hands of Jemma’s boss at S.H.I.E.L.D. Apparently and Tony and Coulson went way back. Coulson was the only one Tony trusted with his creations and was tasked with finding a replacement for Iron Man. 

Which meant it was Jemma’s problem. 

She spent all her lunch break looking over the schematics again. It seemed to be written in code, and not the easy kind. She was supposed to be reverse engineering an Iron Man suit that they could test replacement candidates from S.H.I.E.L.D. with, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of these notes. 

She glanced at the clock and realized the half hour she was supposed to take for lunch was nearly over and she could get her hands back to work. She trudged back to the lab, still glaring at the nonsense on her tablet, when she realized there was someone in her lab. 

And they were flying. 

Jemma gaped. Whoever it was had the Mark II boots on and some spare flight stabilizers strapped to their hands and were wobbly hovering around the lab. They spun around and Jemma recognized who it was. 

“Daisy?!”

Daisy froze midair and blanched. “Shoot.”

The flight stabilizers flickered and the boots shut off, sending Daisy tumbling to the mats below. She scurried to her feet and tried to detach everything from herself. 

“Please don’t tell on me. I came up looking for you, but you weren’t here so I figured I’d wait, but this stuff was just laying out and—please don’t tell Coulson. I can’t get fired already,” Daisy rambled. 

Daisy was a relatively new recruit with a shady past that Coulson decided to take a chance on. He put her to work in cyber security and gave her the lowest rank he could manage, but she still managed to break into the lab to keep Jemma company most days. 

And apparently crack the code that no one else had been able to. 

“How did you know how to work those?” Jemma demanded. 

Daisy blinked. “I-I don’t know, they’re not that complicated. I just turned them on.”

“Show me.”

Daisy eyed Jemma like she was afraid this was a test, but obliged her. She held up the flight stabilizers to Jemma, tapped the sensors, and made a gesture with her hands and the reactor in the center lit up. Jemma gaped again. She had fidgeted with these things for weeks and hadn’t figured out the trick. 

“Am I fired?” Daisy asked, tentatively. 

“Far from it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You want me to do what?” Coulson asked. 

“Make Daisy the new Iron Man. Or Iron Woman,” Jemma replied, though she sounded less convincing the second time.

“Simmons, we have seven candidates lined up already, ranging from ex-Navy SEALs to aerospace engineers, and you want me to make the new Iron Man a hacker who, according to her S.O., can’t even do a pull-up?” Coulson said.

Jemma winced. “We’ve had professionals working on these prototypes for weeks and none of them have made any progress. Daisy managed to get herself in the air on her lunch break because she was bored. There’s more to her than what we think we know. Plus, we don’t have to worry about past training interfering with her new training.”

Coulson stared at her skeptically. “Where is she now?”

“The lab. She’s decrypting some of Stark’s files for me so I can reverse engineer the complete armor.”

Coulson gestured for her to lead the way down to the lab. 

Jemma scanned her card at the door and hoped Daisy was behaving herself. 

Daisy was sitting on top of Jemma’s desk with her left arm encased in a crude version of the gauntlet from the Iron Man suit and a screwdriver in her other hand, jabbing at the wiring inside. 

“Hey, Jemma. I think I figured out the issue with this flight stabilizer—”

“Daisy, that’s not the stabilizer! That’s—”

Too late. Daisy pointed it towards the ground and ignited it. Unfortunately, that was the energy blaster that Jemma had been working on and Daisy was knocked off her feet and into a pile of raw materials. 

Jemma winced and glanced towards Coulson. He looked unimpressed. 

“Sir, I promise that—”

“You have one week to train her. Then, we start interviewing from our list,” Coulson informed her.

Jemma eyed the tangle of limbs that was Daisy. They had a lot to do in one week. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Don’t point that at your face.”

“Why? It’s not on.”

“Didn’t your S.O. teach you that you never point a weapon at your face?”

Daisy rolled her eyes. Jemma was getting to the point that she wanted to smack her every time she did that. In the interest of professionalism, she bit her tongue and made a few calibrations on her tablet. 

“Okay, try again.”

Daisy was rigged up in what looked like the skeleton of an Iron Man suit. Once Daisy decrypted the files, Jemma managed to put together the main components of the suit that would be needed to pilot it. Daisy switched on all the components, seemingly effortlessly, and hovered a few inches above the grass. Jemma took a step back and started the training program. 

The first target lit up and was blasted apart in a fraction of a second. The next one was behind Daisy and she had to spin midair while keeping herself stable to shoot it. 

The next one was a pair on opposite ends of the training field that Daisy had to hit simultaneously, which she did. Her aim still needed work, but she hit the target, which was the important part. 

At the end of the field stood Coulson, watching the training session impassively. 

Daisy finished up target practice and glided over to hover in front of Jemma. Jemma nodded and Daisy killed the thrusters. 

“Do you really think I can do it?” Daisy muttered. 

“I think you’ve proven that you can pilot the suit fantastically. You should have no problem passing the assessment,” Jemma replied, looking through the stats from the session.

“No, I mean do you really think I can be a superhero?” 

Jemma looked up from her tablet. She had never seen someone covered in that much firepower look so timid before. 

“I don’t know. It’s a demanding job, but I think you could be up for it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The day of Daisy’s assessment came and she spent the entire morning in Jemma’s lab. Jemma was too busy performing last minute adjustments to the wiring to offer words of comfort to Daisy, but Daisy didn’t seem to mind as she was scrolling through her phone. 

“Simmons, look at this,” Daisy suddenly blurted, diving over Jemma’s desk. 

“Daisy, I’m a little busy. Your assessment is in two hours and I need to even out the lateral—”

“This is important!”

Jemma glanced up with a frown. The video of penguins falling over was also ‘important’ an hour ago. 

But this actually was. On Daisy’s phone was a live feed from a hostage situation downtown at a bank. 

Jemma gulped. “That’s awful, but there’s not much we can do about it from here.”

“Except for the fact that we have a high-tech supersuit right here,” Daisy prodded. 

“No!” Jemma insisted. “It’s nowhere near ready for the field and even if it was, we don’t have anyone to pilot it—”

“I’m right here.”

“—who has piloted it outside a training facility.”

Daisy groaned. “Come on. Innocent people could be hurt. You can’t expect me to sit here and do nothing.”

“That’s exactly what I expect you to do, considering you’re not a superhero yet and the suit has no armor on it,” Jemma replied. 

“Fine.” Daisy pouted. “At least call Coulson and see if he can send someone down to check it out.”

“Okay.” 

Jemma scooted her chair to the other desk where she had left her tablet. She called up Coulson’s office on the video call. 

“Simmons? Is everything alright?” Coulson asked. 

“Yes, there’s just a situation downtown that Daisy was concerned about. She was wondering if—”

“What is she doing?” 

Jemma spun. Daisy was strapped into the skeletal Iron Man prototype and sprinting towards the windows. 

“Daisy!”

Jemma hung up the call frantically, hoping to limit what Coulson saw of that. 

“I’m sorry, but I have to!” Daisy called back. She swiped the helmet off a table, slid the window open, and jumped out. Jemma held her breath until she saw her rocket down the street. 

Jemma grumbled to herself as she tried to open the cameras she put in the helmet. It took a few minutes, but Daisy eventually opened it on her end too. Thankfully, that was on of the projects that Jemma had focused on early. Otherwise, Daisy would be completely on her own. 

“Okay, Simmons, I know what you’re going to say—”

“I’m going to actually murder you.”

“…Okay. I was expecting ‘be safe’ or ‘OMG, you’re so heroic—”

“Heroic doesn’t mean stupid,” Jemma snapped. “You have no armor, limited firepower, zero experience, and no clue what you’re running into.”

“I know what I’m running into! There’s a hostage situation,” Daisy replied.

“How many hostages? How many people are holding them? What kind of weaponry do they have? What are their demands?”

“Uh……”

Jemma rolled her eyes and sighed. She pulled up surveillance from the bank and surrounding streets. All but one of the security cameras had been shot out and the one functional one was transmitting sideways. Jemma corrected the image and mirrored it over to Daisy’s helmet. 

“Three suspects, armed with double-barreled shotguns. Their only demands have been for cash. NYPD is getting ready to pay,” Jemma informed. “They’re definitely amateurs, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to take them down.”

“Thank you,” Daisy trilled through the comms. 

The lab door behind Jemma beeped open. It was Coulson. 

“What’s going on? Last I saw, Daisy looked like she was stealing the suit.”

“Stealing the suit? Ha!” Jemma plastered a fake smile on her face and flipped the tablet upside down. “She was just messing around.”

“Where is she?” Coulson asked. 

“Restroom.”

“Where’s the suit?”

“….Storage.”

Coulson raised an eyebrow. “Storage? Daisy needs it for her assessment in an hour.”

“I know it was just—”

“Why is the window open?” 

Gunshots rang out from Jemma’s tablet along with a colorful string of curses from Daisy. Jemma’s stomach dropped. 

“Simmons—” Coulson started.

“Video game?” Jemma squeaked helplessly. She knew the ruse was up and dove for the tablet. “Daisy? Daisy, are you alright?”

“Yeah, fine. Orange hat is just a little trigger happy,” Daisy replied. 

Jemma’s eyes flicked between the feed from Daisy’s helmet and the security camera. Daisy had already flown straight through the front windows of the bank and tackled one of the robbers. The other two dove behind counters. 

Daisy herded the hostages out the broken windows while the robbers took cover. 

“Daisy! Three o’clock!” Jemma shouted. 

“Wha—Oh!” 

Daisy whirled just in time to see the second robber, wearing an orange hat, raise his gun at her. She pushed both of her hands in front of her and fired a blast that knocked the robber through the wall. 

Orange hat was effectively unconscious, as was the robber Daisy had tackled on her entry. On the bank camera, Jemma noticed the third robber scuttling around the counter and darting for the broken window. 

“Daisy, the last suspect is running,” Jemma informed her. 

“On it.”

Daisy turned and marched for the door. The police outside were more concerned with the hostages and apparently didn’t notice the escaped robber slip into the crowd. 

“Which way did he go?” Daisy asked. Reporters were starting to converge on her, so she launched into the air and hovered. 

Jemma frantically tapped away on her screens to pull up the surrounding area security cameras. “He’s heading west on 15th Street.”

“Right. Which is…?” 

Jemma rolled her eyes. “Go left, then take the second right.”

Daisy rocketed off in the direction she indicated. She was moving too fast for Jemma to keep up with her on the local cameras, so her only visual came through Daisy’s helmet. Eventually, she spotted the robber, who was peeling off and ditching layers to attempt to blend in with the crowd, even though he was sprinting away from a crime scene. Amateur. 

“White T-shirt, Daisy,” Jemma relayed. 

“Target acquired.”

Daisy swooped lower to the ground to skim just above the sidewalk. Just as she was about to collide with the robber’s back, she swerved to the side and started to ascend. 

“Daisy? What just happened?” Jemma asked. 

Daisy’s only response was to glance down, where she was dangling the robber by his ankle while he screamed. She circled back around to the bank, where the police were finally exploring the scene. She landed on top of a police car and tossed the robber at the feet of one of the cops. 

“I think this belongs to you, too. His friends probably miss him,” Daisy quipped. 

“Alright, Daisy, you’ve done your job, now get back to the lab,” Jemma grumbled. She waited until she saw Daisy go airborne again before letting out a breath of relief. 

Which is when she remembered that Coulson was still standing behind her. 

“I…She…The thing is—” Jemma sputtered. 

Coulson held a hand up to stop her explanation. He looked _mad._

Within a few awkward minutes, Daisy was at the open window, wriggling herself through it. 

“Oh my god, did you see that? The way I blasted that guy through a freaking _wall?_ ” Daisy gushed. 

“Daisy—” Jemma tried to interrupt.

“That was the most epic thing—”

“ _Daisy—”_

“And then when I swooped in and grabbed the guy while he was running? He was screaming like a baby—”

“Agent Johnson.”

The wide grin dropped from Daisy’s face and was replaced with horror as she realized Coulson was there. 

“Director Coulson. I—”

“What you just did was stupid, reckless, and at least ten types of illegal. I could have you arrested for removing classified S.H.I.E.L.D. property from this facility without permission,” Coulson shouted. Daisy stared determinedly at the floor and Jemma tried to melt into her chair. “Not only did you reveal a new Iron Man prototype to the world before it was ready, you put yourself at risk going into the field without proper training, back up, or equipment. To reiterate, your half-baked idea was not only stupid…it was also the most Iron Man thing I’ve seen in months.”

His voice softened, just slightly at the end. 

Daisy hesitantly glanced up at him with a confused expression. “What?”

Coulson sighed. “Tony Stark was a genius, but he was never one for self-preservation or following orders. He was determined to do what was right. It was part of what made him a great superhero, but also nearly got him killed on many occasions. When he tasked us with finding his replacement, I was hoping we would be able to weed out those qualities in the next Iron Man. Apparently, it’s a hazard of the job.”

Daisy and Jemma glanced at each other, then back at Coulson, trying to figure out what exactly Coulson was saying. 

“Agent Johnson, congratulations. You’re the new Iron Man.”

Daisy gaped. “Are…you serious?”

“Agent Simmons wouldn’t have been able to get to this point in the suit’s development without your help and, I hate to admit it, but you did stop a bank robbery today. From what I’ve seen, you have all the qualities to be a superhero,” Coulson said. “Also, the rest of our applicants turned out to be a bunch of tools.”

Daisy’s beaming smile returned full-force. “Oh my god, thank you!”

“Don’t mention it. We’ll need to set you up with a training schedule and get you a handler. I’ve got a few candidates from Operations that I can run by you—”

“No,” Daisy said.

Coulson drew up short. “Excuse me?”

Daisy gulped. “I’ll only take the job if Jemma can be my handler.”

Coulson’s gaze shot to Jemma and he looked just as stunned as Jemma felt. 

“I think we can work that out,” Coulson said finally. “Simmons, you’ll need to get the full suit and weapons systems operational as soon as possible. After Agent Johnson’s stunt, every news station in the city now has footage of the new Iron Man, and that’s sure to cause some crazies to come out of the woodwork. Are you ready for it?”

Jemma looked at Daisy, with her hopeful smile on her face, and then back to Coulson.

“Absolutely.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Left, left, left! Your other left, Daisy!” Jemma shouted. 

She heard a distinctive metallic thud and Daisy’s screen went dark for a second. 

“Daisy? Are you alright?”

Daisy grumbled, “I just ran into a plane, if you consider that ‘alright.’”

“I told you to test out the suit after I did calibrations on the flight stabilizers. It would have let you get used to the new sensitivity of the controls,” Jemma scolded.

“Yeah, but I had better things to do.”

“ _Call of Duty_ does not count as ‘better things’ when you’re a superhero!” Jemma rolled her eyes and relayed a quick message to ground control that their plane was not under attack. She zoomed in on the the holographic display from Daisy’s helmet to find their target. The full body monitor spun slowly in Jemma’s peripheral vision. She was so glad that Daisy had agreed to get rid of the garish red and gold from the old Iron Man suit. Instead, it was painted a glossy black, with silver accents and two yellow pinstripes going down the front. 

The helmet had also been fully redesigned, at Daisy’s request, because she didn’t like the ‘creepy robot face’ on Tony Stark’s versions. The new variety looked more like a sleek motorcycle helmet with a heavily tinted face plate hiding Daisy’s identity.

“It’s strategy training!” Daisy shouted over the roar of a jet engine. 

“I’m sure that strategy training will serve you well when you end up getting sucked into a turbine. Now, proceed to the target I highlighted on your map.”

Jemma tapped the camp Daisy was meant to be infiltrating to put a target on it and swiped it up onto Daisy’s display. Daisy adjusted course and started descending toward the target. 

“Be ready for anything, Daisy. They have heat seeking missiles pointed in your direction, so be ready to dodge,” Jemma warned. 

“Great,” Daisy grumbled. “Well, assuming I don’t get blown up, we should go for dinner when I get back. There’s a nice sushi place down the block that I’ve wanted to check out.”

Jemma’s hands froze over the holotable. “Are you…are you asking me out?” 

Daisy huffed out a laugh. “Have been for the past five missions, but thanks for noticing. Why do you think I wanted you as my handler?”

“Because I know your equipment better than anyone?” Jemma countered, though she knew that wasn’t the reason. Daisy had spent weeks hanging around Jemma’s lab long before she was in the running to be Iron Man. Jemma’s annoyed with herself that it took this long for her to figure out why. 

“There’s a joke in there, but I’m not going to say it,” Daisy muttered. 

Jemma smiled. “I appreciate your restraint. Assuming you don’t get blown up _or_ break anything on the suit or your body, I’ll go get sushi with you.”

Daisy let out a ‘woo-hoo’ and spiraled in the air. 

“How serious are you about the breaking anything condition?” Daisy asked. 

“Deadly.”

“Alright, I’ll just have to be quick. See you in the morning when this place is a pile of dust,” Daisy quipped. 

Jemma smirked. Daisy rocketed towards her destination and Jemma stood ready to provide her back up. 

**Author's Note:**

> A quick Iron Man AU at the request of WhatsThisButtonDo. I tried to mix it up a bit, because I know Iron Man AUs have been done before and I didn't want to rehash the same stuff, so I hope I succeeded! Enjoy!


End file.
